Nintendo had suggested to Ubisoft that it would have been in its best interest to release Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope on the Switch’s successor.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told GameIndustry.biz “(via VGC)” that the issue was it “had already released a Mario Rabbids game [on Switch], so by doing another we had two similar experiences on one machine. On Nintendo, games like this never die. There are 25 Mario games on Switch. Nintendo [has advised] that it’s better to do one iteration on each machine. We were a bit too early, we should have waited for [the next console].”
Guillemot continued by saying, “Because you could play a great game. And we think it will last for ten years, because we will update it for the new machine that will come in the future.” It is also worth pointing out that despite the game’s positive reviews, Ubisoft was surprised that it didn’t sell as well as it wanted.
Guillemot suggested that Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope didn’t sell as well as they hoped because players were turning towards bigger IPs. “The market is suffering a little bit with the inflation situation,” Guillemot said. Because of this, there was “more pressure” on all of the studios to be “more careful.” Guillemot noted that Ubisoft at one point heard from a first-party that it had “also seen the influence of the economic conditions on how much people are buying.”
In our Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope review, Steve Watts wrote, “Put simply, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope is an absolute delight. This is a combination that shouldn’t work and yet it more than works–it excels. When Ubisoft announced Kingdom Battle, the concept seemed so goofy that its success came as a surprise.”
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